Jonathan Manthorpe: Aung San Suu Kyi under fire for failing to back Burma’s Rohingyas

Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi responds to a question during a brief news conference at the United Nations on Sept. 21, 2012.

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is being accused of hypocrisy for refusing to take sides in the ongoing persecution of minority Muslim Rohingyas by majority Buddhist Burmans in the country’s northwestern Rakhine state.

Chided by a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation this past weekend for not using her status as a pro-democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate to condemn the persecution, Suu Kyi refused to budge.

“I know that people want me to take one side or the other, so both sides are displeased because I will not take a stand with them,” she said.

Media and politicians in Muslim countries have been especially quick to accuse Suu Kyi of hypocrisy.

The Organization of Islamic Co-operation has labelled events in Rakhine state “a form of ethnic cleansing.”

The organization’s foreign ministers will meet in Djibouti next week to put together a program of aid and international political pressure on behalf of the Rohingyas.

Yet, as uncomfortable as it may be to witness the political hedging by Suu Kyi — who spent most of the last 20 years under various forms of detention and whose supporters were slaughtered and imprisoned in large numbers by the military regime — her stance is correct.

Since she won election to the new civilian parliament in April, Suu Kyi has been picked to head the assembly’s Committee on the Rule of Law and Stability.

This will not only be a key body in plotting the country’s course through its still-tenuous transition from military rule to democracy, it will also deal with one of the central issues affecting the Rohingyas.

In 1982, the junta removed the Rohingyas’ Burmese citizenship. Since then, they have been banned from travelling within the country without permission. Their lack of citizenship has made them prey to the whims of local military, police and officials.

One of the tasks of Suu Kyi’s committee will be the framing of a new citizenship act, including the status of the Rohingyas.

This will affect the central government’s relationship not only with the Rohingyas, but with all the other estimated 300 ethnic groups within Burma, many of which have mounted long-running armed insurrections against the military during the past five decades.

It would clearly be inappropriate for Suu Kyi to side with one group or another ahead of her committee’s work.

About 200 people, mostly Rohingyas, have been killed, 100,000 displaced and over 10,000 homes burned in two waves of communal violence that started in June and re-ignited last month.

The violence began after a Rohingya man was accused of raping Rakhine Buddhist women.

The conflict has grown and spread, feeding on the centuries-long communal animosity that always lurks just under the surface in this region.

Efforts by Burma’s new civilian president, Thein Sein, to control the situation by declaring a state of emergency and martial law have been only marginally successful.

Rohingya and non-governmental organizations report the soldiers frequently take the sides of the Rakhine Buddhists, and have many times fired indiscriminately on the Muslims.

Thousands of Rohingyas have tried to get over the border with neighbouring predominantly Muslim Bangladesh to join their compatriots in refugee camps.

In 1978, about 200,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh when the Burmese military tried to expel the entire population from Rakhine state.

In 1990-91, a further 250,000 trekked into Bangladesh when the military launched another campaign against them, including forced labour, summary executions, torture and rape.

Burma’s 800,000 Rohingyas have been called by the United Nations “the world’s most persecuted minority,” but there are now signs of attacks on Muslims spreading to other parts of the country.

This is stoking fears that Burma, which began to emerge from more than 50 years of military rule only last year, faces a widespread conflict with its diverse Muslim community of up to six million people.

These clashes come at a sensitive time, not only for the political transition but also as Burma is trying to attract the foreign investment it so desperately needs after decades of international sanctions against a military junta that left it one of the least-developed countries in Southeast Asia.

The common excuse given by Burmese for persecuting the Rohingyas is that they are aliens imported as labourers by the British from what was Bengal, now Bangladesh.

The truth is a good deal more complex. What is now Rakhine state has been a point of friction between the people of South Asia — including the Rohingyas and their ancestors — and the Malay peoples of Southeast Asia for well over 1,000 years.

Rakhine, then called Arakan, was a predominantly Rohingya state within Bengal until 1784 when the army of Burmese king Budapawa invaded and seized the territory.

Many of the Rohingya fled, but returned after the British conquered Burma in 1824.

Since then, there have been countless attempts by the Burmans to expel or otherwise remove them.

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